Microsoft’s China copilot

July 22, 2025

🧨 Microsoft’s China copilot: Microsoft’s finally getting rid of communist China-based engineers on U.S. military cloud projects after a ProPublica report triggered a Pentagon freak-out. Turns out so-called “digital escorts,” security-cleared U.S. babysitters, didn’t understand the tech they were supposed to be safeguarding. Now the defense secretary’s ordered a full supply chain scrub. Microsoft swears it disclosed everything. The military is now triple-checking everything for leaks and spies.

Tags: digital, projects, report, security, tech

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Your pocket scientist is smarter than you think

Android Earthquake Alerts (AEA) system

I read a geeky article that I think you’ll also find amazing.

Google quietly used its Android operating system to turn billions of phones into the largest earthquake detection network in human history.

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Millennials are the newest scam target

Meta AI

(First, a weird image for this story, I know. I was playing around with Meta AI. Why? Coming on Monday, tips, tricks and don’ts of using AI to create art, logos and more. You don’t want to miss that newsletter!)

If you’re a millennial, or you love one from a safe financial distance, brace yourself: This age group is losing more money to scams than anyone else, boomers included.

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100,000+

That’s how many accounts Chess.com bans every month for cheating. Turns out a lot of people need engine assistance to lose with dignity. With 20 million games played daily (13,000 per minute!), the site’s 30-member Fair Play Team is part detective squad, part digital janitor and very busy. No rookies allowed.

🛜 Full bars, slow internet? Those little Wi-Fi bars only show your connection to the router, not your internet speed. So even if they’re full, apps can run slower than a Monday morning. When in doubt, run a speed test and check if your download, upload and ping match what you’re paying for.

402 Tbps

That’s the new internet speed record just set in Japan. It’s 4 million times faster than your Wi-Fi, and no, that’s not a typo. We’re talking entire Netflix libraries in seconds, on regular fiber. Somewhere, a Comcast exec just spit out their latte.

30TB

That’s the size of Seagate’s new monster hard drive, and yes, you can actually buy it. After 20 years of laser dreams, it’s finally here: 30TB for $600. In 2005, that cash got you 400GB, maybe. That’s 75x the space, same price and a lot fewer tangled cables.

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77%

The accuracy rate of EchoNext spotting structural heart disease, higher than 13 cardiologists combined. In a medical version of John Henry, AI went head-to-head with humans, and it won. EchoNext nailed diagnoses from ECGs more often than the docs’ 64%. It’s basically the Sherlock Holmes of heart scans, minus the Victorian outfit.

13

The number of autonomous vehicle companies Uber now has deals with. It currently counts companies like Waymo, Motional, Baidu, even delivery bots like Nuro, in its Infinity Gauntlet. Uber’s building the whole arena. Baidu alone ran 1.4 million robotaxi rides last quarter in China.

1%

That’s the brave percentage of people who actually pay when faced with a paywall. Yea, I don’t either. We harness our energy into searching elsewhere for that kernel of information, or simply throw in the towel.

📺 Your TV isn’t a tablet: Here’s a simple rule. Take your TV’s size in inches and multiply it by 1.2 to get the best viewing distance. For example, if you’ve got a 50-inch screen, sit about 60 inches (or 5 feet) back. Now you can binge without straining your eyes.